A mother in the Chinese city of Shenzhen has taken some hair-raising steps to make sure her quadruplet sons are more easily identified.

The six-year-old boys, named Jiang Yunlong, Jiang Yunxiao, Jiang Yunhan and Jiang Yunlin, look so alike even their mother Tan Chaoyun has trouble telling them apart.

To get over the problem, she decided to shave the numbers 1 to 4 into the hair of the lively youngsters to represent their order of their birth.

The boys certainly stand-out at school, however teachers still have a problem telling them apart and have opted to put them all in to different classes.